Since I Quit Sleeping

"Hey there, sleepy smile. I see you've brought your bedroom eyes."

I've found it hard to sleep since I've been in California, my insomnia only too happy to let jetlag become habit, to keep me wide-eyed well into the Pacific night. I've been trying to set my clock to Jenn's schedule, to get up and write when she gets up to work. I'm getting there, but I don't function well at five am in any timezone, especially if I've been tossing and turning since three.

It's lying in what is still an unfamiliar bed and an unfamiliar place, some disconnected part of my mind still holding on to a belief that it's early afternoon, another listening to the cat's claws tugging at the carpet with every pawstep of his late night wanderings. I hear every car that drones by on the boulevard. Jenn's been here four years, and all she hears is background. Jenn sleeps.

Last Sunday was one of those nights where the problem was comfort. I'd spend two minutes laying on my left and then two minutes on my right. I'd flip the pillow over and try the cool side. I'd kick off the blankets only to reach for them five minutes later. Eventually, I found myself looking up at the ceiling, on my back with my hands resting on my chest, fingers interlaced. I glanced across at Jenn for no other reason than it being something I do now and again, and found that she was resting in this exact same position, the pair of us lying there like vampires. I smiled in the dark, remembering that I was justified in all the things I've spent the last eighteen months doing, that this was the other side of the world. I remembered the Alkaline Trio lyrics that graced the foot of this blog from the time I first began speaking to Jenn until I did the redesign last Friday:

I don't dream since I quit sleeping,
and I haven't slept since I met you
And you can't breathe without coughing in daytime,
and neither can I
So what do you say,
your coffin or mine?

Sometimes I wonder if I'm an insomniac because I'm terrified of missing something.